


Never Too Late | Leon Kennedy

by pro_synths_and_ghouls



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil (Movieverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Romance, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26539498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pro_synths_and_ghouls/pseuds/pro_synths_and_ghouls
Summary: Leon S. Kennedy holds the record for the most strange and unusual cases at the office, but Katalin Kyro is at the top of being the weirdest. Maybe it's the sci-fi cryostasis, the fact she medically died on the table shortly arriving to America, how she has become one of the very few living humans to tell the tale of what Umbrella Corp exactly does with their experiments. It's just the tip of the iceburg, and Leon finally has a chance to find more.Katalin's memories are resurfacing, and with vaccines on the line, beloved Agent Kennedy is again requested for another job. This time protecting Miss Kryo on her trip back to Russia.An easy job? Who could say? Leon was never the best at keeping his personal feelings out of the matter, and Katalin's sweet nature just might be the ticket on what could quite possibly be the most dangerous mission yet.
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 5





	1. The Frozen Woman

“ **Things do not change; we change.** ”

Henry David Thoreau

* * *

**A neat desk was the sign of a sick mind–Katalin had vaguely recalled reading such a line in a book months ago while tucked into her bed one late evening.** If that were truly the case, Katalin would be one of the sanest people in the world, at least on McKinley street located in the Connecticut Duplex Village. Though, to be fair, Katalin cleaned as much as the next person. Dusting, sweeping, even going as far as color-coding her mugs on a shelf in her free time just to organize her cabinets on a lazy Saturday morning. Her problem stemmed from the small place she inhabited. Every nook and cranny stuffed with trinkets and second-hand items, relics and books stashed in bookshelves twice her size, her collections of junk and pens with little tops of animals too childish for someone her age to possess, but rested on her table like a lovely bouquet of flowers. The entire apartment was just a jungle of items between plants and tech, one that crippled the mind when trying to make sense of the mess like an _I-Spy_ book.

However, the apartment had slowly suffered from neglect as the months dragged on. Her abilities stretched thin when she placed her mind elsewhere, causing the apartment to look like a swollen hoard without a purpose. Half-drunken mugs of tea now placed where they could fit, the pens slowly disappearing on the floor, and Katalin’s body on near exhaustion as she spent another night looking into the questions she sought, without even as much as a care for her general health.

She slurped on her third mug of jasmine tea, having lost the other two somewhere in her kitchen a few hours before. Now cold and gathering dust in between the clipped up newspapers or the dirty dishes piled at her sink. She had no time to go back and find them, only focusing her attention on her low-lit laptop, the buzz the only sound emitting from her apartment. She used to keep her television on for the background noise, a sense she had someone there with her in her late-night hunts, but it had been distracting, pulling her from her life’s work. Hence the cord long misplaced under her bed.

 _“One of these days you’re going to have to clean it up_ .” Her landlord had said one morning, Katalin tired beyond comprehension, only mildly hanging onto the words as he brushed by her door with intent, kicking her boots out the way to get a better picture on his tenant’s hoarding. _”You don’t get it cleaned up, I’ll call the cops and have them put you in jail for a few days.”_

She didn’t have a response, so she let him run on his tirade for a few minutes before he exited her home, shutting her own door on her face without another word coming from either of them. It had been a few minutes before she went back upstairs, crawling into bed as she tried to think of what her next government letter would say. She tended to call them camp letters. A trope she had seen in movies a little too often. Where children wrote lies to their parents at their private camps, making the other party believe they were indeed having a swell time. But they weren’t, they never seemed to be at least. 

She had sent one once a month, to some douche by the name of L. Kennedy who never wrote one back. Her only image was a scripted word, _ok_ , to clarify she was sending them to a real person, and not a robot she so claimed to think. It didn’t help the imagery. 

_I’m going to get kicked out._

Well, that was a start. Short, simple, and straight to the point. 

_Apparently I’m a hoarder and I’ll be sent to jail. Could you clarify that?_

_Do you actually get sent to prison for messy houses, or is that a hoax the government wants me to believe?_

And that would be it. A month’s worth of events wrapped up in a lousy three sentences. Perhaps four if she so wished to add in _I lost my pet frog_. But she wouldn’t, not daring to add in how her frog had escaped from it’s cage one early morning, slipping through the air vent and making its way to the front door with its final leap. 

She had found it the next morning, dead and as dry as sandpaper stuck to her carpet. 

_I need a new pet._

_Do you happen to know where the nearest pet shop is? Wait, you wouldn’t know that. Or DO you? What DO you know Mr. Kennedy? How about instead of wondering what I know, how about we look into your brain Mr. Kennedy?_

~~_What kind of dirty secrets do you have?_ ~~

_My frog died._

_I need a new one._

_Preferably an animal that doesn’t require as much care?_

_How about an iguana?_

_I saw one on the animal channel and I think they look neat._

And she’d send the letter the following morning, wrapped up in a neon pink envelope with a sticker keeping it together. This month issuing a tree frog in dedication to her long lost pet. She only wanted to know what the mailwoman thought whenever she opened the mailbox every fifteenth, what twenty-four year old still used those childish stickers from dollar general?

Katalin Kryo, that’s who.

Whose name meant nothing but a crude joke for the nurses that had issued it. 

Frozen in the desolate winters of Russia. _Cryofrozen_ , they used in the papers. Found in the snow with not even a heartbeat to dictate her status, her fingers frostbitten, like her nose, a silver-blue as the locals brought her in that very minute, even if to just thaw her for a funeral. But through those hours, next to the warm glow of a hearty fire, her pulse returned, in minutes, in hours, they couldn’t tell.

Rushed to American soil before she had even spoken a word. 

Bombarded with government officials the second she laid her eyes open in that New York Hospital, some agents who had pride her name tag from her coat found close to the sight. Her surname had been scribbled out, a dull indent of a knife with plastic shards pulling at the seam. Just leaving her picture, and her name, behind.

The only things she remembered.

They kept at her for weeks. Through the itchy IV’s and nurses asking her to eat their disgusting mac and cheese, they’d hand her folders, names, pictures of people she supposedly knew. A team of virologists found dead three weeks prior.

Katalin hadn’t known any of them.

They didn’t buy it.

Which left her living in a hoard in Connecticut, with a dead frog, an agent who wouldn’t dare contact her, and a tenant who liked to complain a little too much. She tried not to think of the whole ideal. It could have been worse, she could have been dead that day. Frozen to the soil like a meat popsicle. 

Then when summer rolled around, the children who frolicked in the fields would find her carcass, poke her with a stick, and run off to tell their friends they just found a dead body. Like that one movie, _Stand By Me_ , a film she caught one late night while eating a whole watermelon by herself. She had eaten that sucker in less than an hour, one twice as big as her head, and something a family of four would need a few days to take in.

When she finished it, she pondered whether or not to go get a cheeseburger.

_Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I’m running out of food._

A note she added to her notebook that very morning. Either a reminder to her future self to tell Mr. Kennedy she was, in fact, a bottomless pit and needed groceries yet again, or simply a warning to herself to stop eating for three people and to slow down on the twinkies. 

She clicked at her computer, taking another quick sip of her tea before glancing at the archive of newspapers. Old ones she’s seen countless times through the months with nothing short of crude journalism and opinions from locals on their so-called blogs. She had read through them once, if not twice the second she had a working computer. But just as her psychologist requested, she swept through them again, lightly, pondering every word in case something jumped at her through the screen. A trip through the past as more and more words blurred together. Losing their meaning, their form, until her eyes, glittering with the light cast from her computer, stopped.

_Umbrella Corp._

Her brows furrowed.

_...speculated the young woman would have died from multiple injuries resulting from Umbrella’s Corp. experiments…_

She jotted it down in her notebook. In her messy writing, purple ink smearing onto her palm as she tried to write as quickly as her fingers could work the pen.

Umbrella Corporation.

_Mr. Kennedy. Please indulge me, but Oswell Spencer wouldn’t happen to be the leader of said company?_

_I need answers._

_-Katalin ♡_


	2. Mr. L.S. Kennedy

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it..”

Charlie Chaplin

* * *

**Katalin chewed on her thumb, splitting her nail with her teeth when three knocks filled the apartment.** Since her unfortunate run-in with her landlord, Katalin had hid herself in the depths of her own caverns like a goblin, jumping anytime a salesman rang her doorbell and pretending she wasn’t home, or better, she no longer lived there. Lately, Katalin could catch her landlord rustling the keys outside on her porch, unlocking her door, and stepping in. She had chills anytime those footsteps filled her hallway, how soft her feet hit the ground as she peddled her way behind a bookshelf, in between boxes of books unkept and blankets set on a chair. She was small enough to nestle herself invisible, listen to the floorboards as he rustled through her things downstairs.

It was always her paperwork. The scattering of her doodles and scraps rendered useless to whatever he wanted to find. He couldn’t read them, even if he had wanted to. Whatever memories stuck in her mind, the supposed rumors of Umbrella Corp experiments, it was dangerous, highly so. The type of information you didn’t leave out for wandering eyes especially if they wanted to find any reason to kick you out. Her notes were her own, written for a notebook long lost in her living room, with symbols and sentences carved in her mind. Faces. Messily drawn from blurry memories. Just enough to show her psychologist what types of dreams she had been having. Nothing she’d show just anyone on the street. Especially to some creep looking through her things.

One of these days, she’ll wake up with a league of cops at her door, asking her what she knows and sending her away forever. Leaving her tiny frog grave along with the spiders who lived in the cracks of her hoard. She’d miss Freddy Templeton, the crack-head daddy long leg she had caught running in her kitchen, whom she placed on the window sill two days ago.

The door closed, and Katalin waited until the floors stopped moaning and the familiar silence returned. Old piping heightened her ears, looking out for the slightest noise left out of place. A creak, a shove, something. Any old fool could pretend to close the door, draw out unsuspecting people such as herself. The idea caused her spine to grow cold, she scooted further behind the blanket. Adding another ten minutes to  _ really _ make sure he was out of the house, a feeling digging deep in her stomach to just stay hidden a few more moments despite the ache in her calves and knees.

His beer-berated voice sounded off outside, audible through the crack of her open window, still relatively close to her door, cold and distasteful to whoever had stopped his joyriding in her private home so soon.

Leon Scott Kennedy had made an unexpected trip to Connecticut. Not a long drive from the more bustling city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but enough to spark some questions the minute Adam Benford had requested his utmost urgency. He could only imagine what her face would be like when a strange man walked to her door, declaring he was her guardian agent, followed by asking questions for those more personal matters. Such as  _ Oswell E. Spencer was killed in 2006 and only those on the task force and his murderers knew. Tell me Miss. Kryo, how the everloving hell would you know something like that? _

His fingers pressed into his temples the second he parked his car. The same strange rush of panic anytime he had to give out his more personal details and doing a little reading on his most interesting project, Katalin would undoubtedly be cautious. Perhaps even more so when the time came to flash his government-issued badge. The Division of Security Operations. A strict counterterrorism agency with direct Presidential oversight, and unimaginable access to the vilest and despicable things Leon could ever see. 

A direct reason to not be trusted.

Leon double-checked his gun was  _ not _ on safety. His old graduation gift, a Desert Eagle .50 AE Magnum, customized for him and most certainly not the standard weapon distributed to cops or agents alike. Much more powerful, and a piece of him that saved his ass a few more times than he liked. As routine, he added the clip, snapped back the slide to load his first round, and strapped it to his holster upon his chest, completely hidden underneath his jacket. 

His mind was still reeling when he spotted someone exiting her house. Her uptight landlord who was a bit more than just a standard prick, a complete asshole, and a guy Katalin had mentioned once or twice in her letters. Completely disregarded later through her tiny doodles as if they were, in fact, not a problem. Government agent or not, breaking into someone else's house was just morally wrong, and it was strange she brushed it under the rug so quickly. The same sentence even.

Leon would never admit it to his superior officers, but he had messed around in the systems once or twice, every agent found something to do in their downtime, he just preferred to look in the more revealing reports of citizens he had come across, and Dennis Holt had a pretty large rap sheet, all the way down to three bankruptcies. There was no way in hell he owned a legitimate business renting outhouses. No way in hell. 

If only he had asked Adam to check it out before letting her run amok, but whatever.

Adam wasn’t going to tell him everything. If he did, Leon’s job would be much easier, less cryptic, fewer puzzles. Working for the DSO felt like the Raccoon City museum keys on some days. If you didn’t have the right one, you were in deep and utter shit. You just had to roll with the punches, continue looking in the dark until you come across a suspicious-looking spade key in a toolbox, and run like hell to the exit before someone nipped your ankles.

Then again, maybe he was just being dramatic.

Leon whistled at Dennis, scaring him enough to drop his large ring of keys. Most likely to every house in the quaint little community of apartments and condos. Much nicer than he had seen through satellite view, but the person who owned them, that was a completely different subject.

Dennis slapped on a smile the second he could, masking the obvious breaking and entering as if he was a tenant leaving his own home. Cigarette smoke permeated the air from his clothes far before he had even reached Leon, hand-stretched out, fingers lined with grease, “are you my three o’clock appointment?” He asked, snickering with such delight Leon’s blood curdled the second he touched him. “You sounded a lot more different on the phone.”

“I get that a lot.” 

“I’m sure.” Dennis shoveled his keys back into his pocket, “I was expecting someone more-”

“Chiseled?” Leon cocked a brow, humoring him until he figured out what the hell was going on. Katalin had seldom given out actual emergency details. He had to brush up on his old cop skills and hopefully get to the bottom of it. Dennis wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, easily the type that would spill the beans with enough liquor in his system. 

But Leon refused to invite him to a bar anytime soon.

“Do you by chance know who lives in this building here?” Leon took a peek at the bedroom window on the second floor, the curtains spilling back as if someone had been observing. 

Dennis shook his head, “Nah, some broad. Tends to keep to herself y’know?”

Yeah, Leon knew. Knew more than anyone else. 

“So someone lives there.” Leon began to go through the list of criminal activities in his head, “I don’t recall breaking and entering being something you were jailed for, but I guess with all the cocaine busts it gets a little hazy, right?”

Dennis stayed quiet, swallowing the hard lump in his throat while Leon’s short-lived smile rested on his features. 

“What are you a cop?” Hostile, Dennis stepped back just enough to lay some distance between the two of them. Enough to stop Leon from forming any funny ideas, if he had them that is, but Leon hadn’t even given him the satisfaction of giving him space, only keeping enough separation to let out a coy remark under his breath.

“Between you and me, only for about a day. Shortest career in my lifetime, the absolute worst. You would have no idea how that public treated me when I arrived in the city,” He chuckled at his own joke, “but the Secret Service didn’t seem to mind when they hired me on the spot.”

Dennis wiped the sweat forming at his brow, and Leon moved closer, this time enough to subtly showcase his gun still holstered near his arm. The weight pressing deeper into his subconscious the minute he finished his threat, “you break into that house again, we’re going to have some problems.”

Leon hadn’t even given Dennis enough time to say something else. Not like he could anyway. He was scared shitless. The color running from his face the second a gun had come to the conversation, and there was no need to question if Leon meant it or not. The intimidation in his eyes was enough. The very ones you catch right before you find yourself dead.


	3. The Woman Behind the Letters

“I don’t believe in love at first sight, 

but I believe in meeting someone for the first time 

and knowing they’re going to change your life.”

Unknown

* * *

**Leon let the back of his knuckles hit against the door, listening for any sort of movement coming from inside the house.** Nothing. Giving the illusion of a home completely empty of any living soul. At this point in the routine, Leon would already be hearing the patter of feet coming forward, sometimes the soft-spoken voices of kids asking questions, television or even a blasted radio to signal at least  _ someone _ was home. Katalin’s house was eerily quiet, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of Dennis Holt’s habit of invading privacy, or she really was that skittish of a person. The chance was fifty-fifty, and he really didn’t want to pry more than he needed.

Leon had only wrapped his hand around the doorknob, turning it just enough to get a peak of pitch darkness inside. For ten am, he was expecting the soft glow of morning light. Perhaps even a lamp shining in case her curtains were darker than intended, it really did feel like she wasn’t home, but he knew she was in there. One hundred percent positive. It wasn’t as if her GPS could suddenly turn off in a moment’s notice. It was located deep in her skin, close to her spinal cord, and supposedly top grade from what he read. He would have gotten an alert the moment she left the perimeters. 

Leon could even catch the scent of mandarin oranges, fresh. She had to have been there.

He gently pushed the door forward, a coat dragging on the floor as the doorknob locked tightly. Held by a delicate hand, her foot stopping the door from pressing onward. A newfound habit she had grown in the last few minutes, perhaps one she should have developed months ago. Katalin had already bunkered down in her bedroom once that morning, a second time would damper her mood more so than the flash floods.

“Your gun,” her voice startled him. So clear and sharp, like glass. A tone vaguely familiar with how her r’s rolled, authoritative, a complete turn from the picture he had conjured through her letters. “Personal, or issued?” She hadn’t even paused to ask, just shifting all her weight against him. Stopping him from moving the door any more than a few inches.

“Personal.”

“Nice piece. Buy it yourself?”

“Gift.”

“Neat. So I’m guessing you’re not okay with parting with it.” Her heels dug into the floors. The coat ripped at its seam when she brushed it away with her toe. “Who are you? Not many people can make Dennis Holt freak out like that. I also heard you mention the Secret Service in your little speech there. Cool. Any comments on that? You’re not here to kill me, are you? Because I’d much rather go out on my own accord.”

“Really?” He asked, “how so?”

“Blown up. Grenade Launcher. Heard that’s a rather fascinating way to go out.”

“Ambitious.”

He finally lost his grip on the handle, instead going to grab his badge from his back pocket and slipping it to her between the cracks. Painted fingernails, pink. Slender hands, calluses ridden across her sun-kissed flesh.“I uh,” Leon paused, “I apologize for never getting the time to write. I was going to comment on your frog, but I felt like that would be reopening fresh wounds.”

A gentle smile curved at her lips, how buttery the leather felt between her hands as she opened it. Inspecting. The metal shield so fresh and pristine, shining even in the low-lit room, she’d bet it was new. Badge number, card, the works, government man alright.  _ Leon Scott Kennedy _ . Well, now she had a face to a name and a first name at that. 

_ Leon. _

Not something she’d pick personally, but it fit. As did his voice. Like apple pie, something cozy, refreshing, and what was the word?  _ Homely _ ?

She slipped him his badge back, “Croak-a-Cola died a noble death.”

Leon’s brows furrowed, “did you just say Croak-a-Cola?” He knew it was wrong to laugh at the death of a pet. It didn’t matter, any animal, any size, cracking a joke on a dead loved one should have been one of the several layers in hell. But damn, Katalin wasn’t making it easy.  _ Croak-a-Cola _ ? He might as well have called his old dog Pupsicle. 

“Cute name.” He finally said, covering the laughter coming forward with an executed cough.

“What’s the Division of Security Operations?” Katalin couldn’t help but ask. Her memory failed her yet again. She had all sorts of government agents breaking down her hospital door the second she came to, from mild city cops to FBI, to presidential Secret Service. All asking questions about relatively the same thing,  _ Umbrella Corp _ . A company with a long history of screwing people over, and an even bigger involvement in experimenting it seemed.

The pads of her fingers grazed her arm. Track marks left by needles. Not only IVs. Small dotted scars, like chickenpox, but thicker to the touch. “Is it new?” She continued when she hadn’t received an answer. 

“All new system.”

“What do you do exactly?” A question she had asked before, but in purple pen. The day she had asked for more movie suggestions on Netflix, to which neither of them received a reply.

“Mostly counter-terrorism.”

She read that on his badge, “counter what, exactly?”

Leon glanced at the neighboring apartments, still empty it seemed, the morning dew dissipating into the gray skies from the heat building. “I’ll answer all your questions,” he said quietly, enough for only her to get the gist of what he was asking, “but I can’t answer them out here, not in the open at least. Never know who’s listening.”

Katalin had stepped from the door, opening it just enough to see him eye-to-eye, and leaving just enough space to stop the avalanche of coats preparing to fall at her feet. “Sounds like someone is scared.” 

Leon, for a split second, thought he had the wrong woman. Her files had only bore one photo, that of her badge found in the wreckage. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman that hadn’t smiled, her eyes lacking in soul. As if she wasn’t alive, a dead man walking long before her heart medically stopped. The Katalin standing before him radiated happiness. Thick hair falling just shy of her shoulders, the color of sweet cola, with the faintest of yellow undertones sparking in the light. But what struck him were her eyes. Amber. Almost a pure gold when the natural light had hit, inhuman, and a clear indication Umbrella was involved–somehow at least. If only she could recall something.

“Let me grab a coat,” she said quickly, “my house is a  _ tad _ dirty and I don’t want to see your reaction when you step inside. Not like it’s  _ that _ terrible” She tried to smile, her voice dragging on with a slight mumble as she searched for her pullover somewhere on the floor. A teal sweater lost in the other rainbow jackets and coats with store tags hanging off the sleeve. “I mean, it’s messy, but it’s not  _ messy,  _ ya feel me?” 

Leon could hear Katalin’s voice fade away as she went deeper into the house, either too lost in her own thoughts to realize Leon could no longer hear her, or just simply mumbling things as she went along stacked boxes and shopping bags left unopened. She was still stuck on the idea that her tiny apartment, despite being packed with trinquits, clothing, relics, and whatnot, wasn’t as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Just a little dusting, some more minor shoving, and perhaps a reorder would do the trick.

Her small collection of ceramic cat statues said otherwise. 

“Anyway, I had already looked over the files Benford gave to me.”

Leon’s ears perked up, “what?”

“That guy, um, Alan, Archie, the old guy from the white house?” Katalin said, pulling on her sweater the second she shut her door. “He had mailed me a few things six months ago and I just found them. Last Tuesday I think. I, uh, left them on a chair and I ended up putting some blankets on it, completely forgot about it until I moved them while looking for, uh-.” She stopped before she revealed what she was actually looking for in the midst of that moment. A pair of socks that had pom-poms stuck on the end, her favorite pair to slide around the upstairs floors when the neighbor put on music.

“Adam? Adam Benford?” He asked, checking off the second thing his boss  _ didn’t _ tell him. Katalin let off a breath of relief, thanking the stars he hadn’t got stuck on the pom pom socks. 

“Yeah that guy.” 

“Why?”

Katalin shrugged, jumping from her porch as the autumn showers began. “Um, research, or something. I didn’t get to read all of it on the account I plugged my tv back in.” She remembered fondly of the tv shows she binged that night. Mostly documentaries, the ones about snakes and bears, cougars and even house cats. She especially loved the special on all the dangerous creatures in Australia, marking that as a place she never wanted to go.

She learned a lot from tv, things she must have forgotten, or things she never once knew. A gateway to realities she would otherwise dream of as impossible, and certainly a way to pass the time as she ate chips on her bed. 

Leon, on the other hand, was still stuck on wondering what Adam Benford possibly thought. Files? To someone even Adam believed had been working for Umbrella? His case just got a lot more interesting.

“I saw this diner on the way here,” Leon gestured to his car, pulling Katalin’s attention from a worm poking from the soil. “Why don’t we talk over there for a little while?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
